One day, she received a message from a stranger. This woman offered to lead her on a self-healing trip hiking through the Scottish highlands.It seemed like a sign—a big sister sent when she needed one most.In this sometimes hilarious, sometimes terrifying, but always inspiring memoir, an introverted pollyanna is paired up with her polar opposite—a steamrolling, abrasive female with completely unorthodox healing methods. As they barrel through the winding one lane roads in a tiny rental car stopping to hike at breathtaking mountains and glens, an outrageous series of events forces Ninya to reclaim her power and find the strength to heal herself in one of the most beautiful places on earth.Readers of “Eat, Pray, Love” and “Wild” will love this memoir.

    They specialize in non-fiction about Wales, its culture and history (including autobiography), as well as the history of the Celts and the Tudor period. They also have some children's books about Welsh history and folklore.A classic story about Canadian Firbank's experiences as a new Snowdonia farmer.The best-known and most-loved book about North Whales.

    

    Wild creatures that have lived here for thousands of years are disappearing, because of pollution and persecution, competition with alien species, changing farming and forestry practices, and climate change.It’s not just rare creatures such as the Scottish wildcat or the red squirrel that are vanishing. Hares and hedgehogs, skylarks and water voles, even the humble house sparrow, are in freefall. But now, at last, there is hope.Author and naturalist Stephen Moss has travelled the length and breadth of the United Kingdom to see just how Britons are fighting back to save the wildlife they love. In Newcastle, he sees otters that have returned to the river Tyne and red kites flying over the Metro centre; in Devon, beavers on the River Otter; and in London, peregrines – the fastest living creature on the planet – which have taken up residence in the capital.Elsewhere in the British countryside things are changing too. What were once nature-free zones are being ‘rewilded’; giving our wild creatures the space they need – not just to survive, but also to thrive.As Britain’s wildlife begins its long, slow fightback, perhaps, Stephen Moss argues, we are beginning to realise that nature is no longer a bolt-on luxury – and that it is absolutely essential for our well being, both as individuals and as a nation.

    The wish to protect wildlife is now a central goal for our society, but where did these ‘green’ ideas come from? And who created the cherished institutions, such as the National Trust or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, that are now so embedded in public life with millions of members?From the flatlands of Norfolk to the tundra-like expanse of the Flow Country in northern Scotland, acclaimed writer on nature Mark Cocker sets out on a personal quest through the British countryside to find the answers to these questions.He explores in intimate detail six special places that embody the history of conservation or whose fortunes allow us to understand why our landscape looks as it does today. We meet key characters who shaped the story of the British countryside – Victorian visionaries like Octavia Hill, founder of the National Trust, as well as brilliant naturalists such as Max Nicholson or Derek Ratcliffe, who helped build the very framework for all environmental effort.This is a book that looks to the future as well as exploring the past. It asks searching questions like who owns the land and why? And who benefits from green policies? Above all it attempts to solve a puzzle: why do the British seem to love their countryside more than almost any other nation, yet they have come to live amid one of the most denatured landscapes on Earth? Radical, provocative and original, Our Place tackles some of the central issues of our time. Yet most important of all, it tries to map out how this overcrowded island of ours could be a place fit not just for human occupants but also for its billions of wild citizens.

    They are particularly known for their evocative calls which embody wild places; they provoke a range of emotions that many have expressed in poetry, art and music.There is a wildlife spectacle that can transport the soul to a place of yearning and beauty, to an experience that has inspired generations of thinkers and dreamers. Imagine if you will, a blustery, cold day in December. Bitterly cold. A bird stands alone on the edge of a mudflat, some distance from where you are standing. Its silhouette is unmistakable. A plump body sits atop long, stilty legs. The long neck arcs into a small head, which tapers further into a long curved bill. The smooth, convex outlines of this curlew are alluring. They touch some ancestral liking we all have for shapes that are round and smooth. The curved curlew’s outline is anomalous in this planar, uniform landscape, but its colour blends well. The mud is gunmetal grey, the curlew brown and the water murky. The sky is dull with a hint of drab. The air is infused with the smells of decay.Over the last thirty years curlew numbers have fallen by an alarming 20 per cent across the European continent, and in their most western reaches in the Irish Republic there is nothing short of a disaster unfolding. In the 1980s there were around 5,000 pairs of nesting curlews, today there are fewer than 130, a staggering drop of 99 per cent. So alarming are the figures that curlews were made a species of highest conservation concern in the UK in December 2015, and put onto the red list of threatened species by the IUCN, the worldwide union of conservation bodies which monitors the status of animals and plants throughout the globe. They are now in the same category as jaguars, ‘near threatened,’ which means extinction is likely in the future.This transition of curlews to high conservation status made it clear they were slipping away for problems that could be addressed with the public and political will to solve them. It was then that the idea of a 500-mile journey by foot began to crystallise in Mary Colwell’s mind and became a concrete plan. Colwell decided to take time out to walk from the West coast of Ireland through Wales to the East coast of England to raise awareness about its plight, and to raise funds to protect this beautiful bird and its habitat.Colwell started walking in the early spring when birds were first arriving on their breeding grounds in the west of Ireland, walking through to Wales when they incubated their eggs. She then travelled through England to coincide with the time when the chicks were hatching. Six weeks after setting out she arrived in East Anglia as the fledglings were beginning to try out their wings. By finishing on the east coast, she marked the place where many curlews would come to spend the winter.Colwell chronicles her impressive journey in this beautifully illustrated book, weaving a wonderfully told story of the experiences on her walk, interspersed with the natural history of this most impressive of birds that has fascinated us for millennia.

    A book about our growing alienation from nature, it is also a brilliant meditation on the capacity of the writer to bring us back to earth, our home.In the first ecological reading of English literature, Jonathan Bate traces the distinctions among nature, culture, and environment and shows how their meanings have changed since their appearance in the literature of the eighteenth century. An intricate interweaving of climatic, topographical, and political elements poetically deployed, his book ranges from greenhouses in Jane Austen's novels to fruit bats in the poetry of Les Murray, by way of Thomas Hardy's woodlands, Dr. Frankenstein's Creature, John Clare's birds' nests, Wordsworth's rivers, Byron's bear, and an early nineteenth-century novel about an orangutan who stands for Parliament. Though grounded in the English Romantic tradition, the book also explores American, Central European, and Caribbean poets and engages theoretically with Rousseau, Adorno, Bachelard, and especially Heidegger.The model for an innovative and sophisticated new ecopoetics, The Song of the Earth is at once an essential history of environmental consciousness and an impassioned argument for the necessity of literature in a time of ecological crisis.

    The farm was high up a mountain, nearly impassable in winter. The neighbors were surly, or perhaps just unused to foreigners. But the setting was breathtaking, and soon it changed Jenny's and Robert's lives.What began as the somewhat conventional dream of a young, ambitious couple from London looking for a weekend home quickly became a different vision. Horatio's mother, romantic and tenacious, found it impossible to leave the fierce and beautiful land. She abandoned her job, her social world, and eventually her marriage to raise her two sons in the company of a herd of sheep, a few dogs, and the badgers, foxes, and mice who had prior claim to her new world. While other boys were going to films and listening to rock music, Horatio was weaning ewes and watching weather and surviving the furor of irascible neighbors. His childhood was marked by wonder and joy, and it is that wonderment that he bestows upon the reader as he recounts the story of the ancient, sometimes brutal, way of life on a hill farm. This wise book is a moving tribute to his mother, both beautiful and brave.

    But in the dim light frost shimmers, stars twinkle and hearths blaze as we come together to keep out the chill. In spite of the season, life persists: visiting birds fill our skies, familiar creatures find clever ways to survive, and the world reveals winter riches to those willing to venture outdoors.In prose and poetry spanning seven hundred years, Winter delights in the brisk pleasures and enduring beauty of the year's turning. Featuring new writing from Patrick Barkham, Satish Kumar and Anita Sethi, extracts from the work of Robert Macfarlane, James Joyce and Kathleen Jamie, and a range of exciting new voices from across the UK, this invigorating collection evokes the joys and the consolations of this magical time of year. “A carefully selected compilation of undeniably gripping extracts and specially commissioned pieces … the final book in a fantastic series designed to celebrate the seasons”—LandLove magazine“Be inspired on a winter walk by writers who adore the frosty season” – Country Walking magazine“To open its covers is to open onto a landscape which you have not yet crossed and to feel yourself beckoned in. It might be an intellectual landscape – littered with strange formations of thought-rocks you have never encountered. It might be an emotional landscape – bathed in the colour of an unfamiliar sky. It might even be a spiritual one, animated by the sound of an unheard yet strangely familiar melody. … This book will take you from mountain heights to urban jungle, and from the back of a cow shed to the slippery deck of an 18th Century sailing ship. … If you want a book to help reduce your heating bills this Winter, this could be it. The cosy effect of curling up with it will work wonders.” -- Richard Littledale, blogger“Packed with good writing … a good mixture of familiar and unfamiliar” – Mark Avery“Just adorable… it’s the most beautiful writing. Makes you feel in keeping with the seasons” – Karen Gimson, BBC Radio Leicester“Alive and vibrant, both in the imagery it evokes and in the feelings it arouses. Without doubt Winter, that most enigmatic of seasons, comes gloriously alive in this lovely anthology. The editor, Melissa Harrison, has done a commendable job of keeping this quartet of anthologies completely relevant, with each seasonal interpretation allowing a heartening and thoughtful meditation into the true meaning of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter” – jaffareadstoo.blogspot.co.uk

    It is the most complete photographic guide to British birds ever published and the only one to be designed to give everything that you need on each spread in a simple-to-use format. Every text entry covers identification of adults and juveniles, songs and calls, and where they are most likely to be found.Illustrated with specially commissioned photography and maps to show where in Britain the birds are found and at what time of year, this accessible guide also features cross-references to similar-looking species, containing everything a birdwatcher needs to know in one, easy-to-use, portable volume. It is the perfect photographic field guide for the birdwatching beginner.

    

     In this volume he relates the first four years of his outdoor odyssey, from his initial escapist trips, through his gradual move towards full-time outdoor living, to his decision to put the harsh British winters behind him and head off to the more benign climate of southern Spain. Sincere but light-hearted, this story recounts his experiences in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Scotland, alongside the mental journey leading to his conviction that a conventional life is no longer for him, despite the well-meaning advice of his family and friends. The second and final part of Tony’s story will be available this winter.

    In her numbered days living in the Easternmost House, Juliet fights to maintain the rural ways she grew up with, re-connecting with the beauty, usefulness and erratic terror of the natural world.The Easternmost House is a stunning memoir, describing a year on the Easternmost edge of England, and exploring how we can preserve delicate ecosystems and livelihoods in the face of rapid coastal erosion and environmental change.

    Through the Smoke Hole, we will escape the gaze of the Spyglass and find ourselves.Assailed by seductive promises and controlled by social media, we are losing our sense of direction. We are losing ourselves. We have networks, not communities.At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our lives - identity, technology, trust, love, politics and global pandemic, celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole three metaphors for the modern world - a commons of imagination. Let us journey together, and these stories be your ally - hold them in your pocket, breathe deeper, feel steadier and become acquainted with rapture.

    The lasting fascination of all three books lies in the contrast between the natural hopefulness of their young author and the economic hopelessness of the scene to which he has committed his life.